Posts

Pretending a thing’s great, because we’ve already decided it’s great (or the media or an authority figure has convinced us it’s great), is an affliction suffered by many (particularly in the insecure American middle class). For example, people sometimes praise a film because respected and intellectual movie critics give it a high rating; when those same people watch the film, they find in it virtues that may not really be there, simply to avoid feeling like they don’t “get it.”

This tendency creates some awkward public situations. Imagine a famous singer waiting to sing the national anthem before a game. She stands center-court or midfield, depending on the sport, knowing whichever team loses will see its season end this very night–that’s how important the game is. The singer’s voice is the source of her fame. When she performs, people expect flourishes, tonal modulations, effortless vibrato–a general mastery overall. The lights are brighter than those of the venues to which she’s accustomed, and it’s odd to be alone in the center, with no backstage to retreat to, and all that anxious energy stewing in a ring around her. Nevertheless, she’s a professional. Clutching the microphone with both hands, the tip comes to rest lightly on the indentation between her chin and lower lip, and she begins.

Except on this occasion, she starts the song a couple steps high, effectively placing the word “free”–the big climax, seventh word from the end–just out of range. No one knows this but her, and she struggles to keep a quaver from her voice. This game is televised–the effects of a screw-up are infinite. The audience assumes she can sing anything, and in any range. As long as she’s playing to her strengths, which would normally be the case, she can prevent them ever knowing she has limits. But tonight, apparently, a limit was going to reveal itself. The word approaches. She feels she has no choice but to go for it. So with all her respiratory might, she belts it out long and loud, and it’s a half-step flat, and there’s an obvious strain in her voice. Anyone not tone-deaf would notice. She is mortified, but manages to finish the song.

The audience goes wild with deafening cheers and applause. A generous observer might credit their enthusiasm to their esteem for the American flag, and for a handful, this may be true. Still, others might simply be getting a head start cheering for whichever team they support. But the majority of the crowd is clearly blinded by celebrity–by what they expected to hear, as opposed to what they did hear. They react out of the foregone conclusion that Singer X is great, that she is a famous singer because she’s a phenomenal singer; that money follows quality. You can be certain, though, there’s another, more quiet contingent who feels extremely awkward right now, because they’re honest with themselves about what they just witnessed: a famous singer blowing it on a really big stage. And it somehow makes it worse that people are pretending it didn’t happen. In fact, they’re going beyond pretending it didn’t happen: they’re acting as if it was wonderful.

For nearly forty years, I’ve called this animal a buffalo. Somewhere along the way, I learned it’s also called a bison–American bison, to be exact. But that didn’t make it any less a buffalo, it just now had two names–interchangeable, like pig and hog.

At Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, the part near Cadiz, Kentucky, I’ve driven through the Elk & Bison Prairie numerous times, once even having to stop the car completely, because buffalo–er, bison–had surrounded us (I was with my dad). It was a transcendent moment, having these beasts on all sides, who could end us with one toss of the head, these icons of the American plains.

My old painting, Blue Buffalo. Blue bison doesn’t have the same flow.

There are cities named after it; there are national brands with the word in their names; the animal is used in countless folk and Americana songs. But I learned, not too long ago, that to call this furry behemoth a buffalo, is to call it the wrong thing. After all these years, I decide to look it up, to see if there’s a difference between the two terms. What I discovered surprised me. It turns out the only true buffalo are in Asia and Africa (think water buffalo). What we have in America is actually only a bison. Though it’s no less majestic, it’s also no more a buffalo.

Imagine all the names of things that must be changed now, things integral to the very culture we inherit, and that we hope to pass on to our kids and grandkids! Doesn’t this revelation make you wonder if everything we assume to be true is really just made up? Or that we’re making it all up as we go?

Okay. I might be overreacting. But now, when I see Blue Buffalo dog food in the grocery store, with a little blue bison leaping on the logo, I think, “Your brand’s a lie!”

Fads are often silly from the start, and yet they grow even sillier with age, some of them degrading entirely to pure nonsense (think tight-rolled jeans). One of the sillier fads I embraced as a kid was the lifeguard tank top shirt. It must’ve been about 1984, give or take a year–the start of a period which, spanning the entire second half of the eighties, I’m realizing was seminal in the development of who I am. The seeds of lifelong interests were sown in those roughly five years. Memories I have from that time rank among my favorites. There was a magic in that long corridor between ages eight and thirteen that I didn’t identify then–though I certainly felt it–that is becoming clearer with age. An innocence on the verge of experience. The mystery of girls deepened, resulting in some killer crushes. Music became a vehicle for any emotion or memory I might have had, and it did so with increasing intensity–any music I was into, in fact, from Huey Lewis and the News to 3rd Bass to Guns N’ Roses. What I now know to be a budding self-consciousness, was to me then an expansion of the horizon itself, and the awkwardness and heartbreak were as necessary as the triumphs and thrills.

At that age, I also became increasingly image-conscious, which sounds a little shallow to the present me, but at the time, it somehow fit: blissfully ignorant of social class, the idea I could wear a certain shirt and be part of a certain group held a charming simplicity. I didn’t know any better then; I see the folly of that view only in reflection. What I did know was that the world (for me) was getting bigger; that the teenage years looked exciting and grownup; that things were now either “cool” or not, and to be “cool” was everything. Even if it meant traipsing sunburnt down Panama City Beach in a tank top with the word lifeguard printed on it in red letters.